Death Takes One
by Cozzybob
Summary: Heero dies. Death takes him home. Mentions of Relena and Duo.


**Death Takes One**  
by cozzybob

Pair: Heero, Sandman's Death, Relena, some extremely subtle 1+2ish-ness

Warning: death by stroke, angst, sapness--hell, it almost made me cry and I freaking wrote it.

Note: This is the technical first in a series of crossovers with the Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman. You don't need to know anything about the comics to understand the fic, though you do need to know GW. I'll be posting these individually one by one because they are stand-alones.

...Also? OMG YOU GUYS ROCK. I had to say that--I'd left FFN a long time ago, and I'd never thought I'd say that I'm happy to be back, but I am. Thanks so much for the reviews, guys, it means a lot after all this time.

Summary: Heero dies. Death takes him home.

* * *

Put his head in a leg-iron smashed between two gundams and a dropped colony, and it still wouldn't describe the worst headache of his life. Heero slid off his desk chair as his entire right side burned, tingled, went limp in a matter of seconds, minutes, blinks--the room swirled, and he cried out, his brain trying to pulse its way out of his skull. He felt his forehead strike the hardwood floor but that only made it worse, and when he opened his eyes, never realizing that he'd closed them, the room spun like vertigo on a space walk in zero g without a safety line in the middle of an MS battle while high on Zero. Bad. The ceiling was on the floor, the floor on the walls, the walls under his feet, and his head ached so much that he screamed.

He tried to speak, but he couldn't move the right side of his mouth, and no one was here to listen to him slur anyway. Still, he used his left side to haul him back to the chair, and with all his strength, he crawled up and punched the phone; it fell to the floor. Heero crawled to it as his head kept building and building in pressure until he was sure it was going to explode--and he reached the phone, hit a button, speed-dial came on, but he couldn't pick up the receiver, he didn't know who he was calling, and even if he did, he couldn't speak, so he gargled and collapsed to the floor like a fish out of water.

In the dull roar of his brain cells screaming for the oxygen they would not receive, he could hear the receiver softly click, and a woman's voice called his name.

There was no answer. She hung up.

He closed his eyes.

A woman, calling his name...

"Heero," she said. It wasn't Relena, but he knew who it was because he was afraid of her, and he didn't open his eyes for fear that she was real.

Death-cold hand on his forehead smoothing back dampened hair. The pain was gone, then. Everything gone, and he breathed before realizing that he didn't have to, and he stopped his heart because he was dead and his body was dead and everything was dead and he didn't have to beat it any longer.

It was wrong to be relieved, but he was.

"Open your eyes, Heero."

He opened his eyes and he was sitting up, and his body was still down there, like a hermit crab, crawling out of his shell--and she was there, she was there and she wasn't anyone that he knew, but he recognized her because they always did, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life, or afterlife, or unlife, or death.

She smiled at him, the sugar-coated curl of generous lips. She was squatted down, elbows gracefully slumped over her knees as she looked into his eyes, searching in the delicate way one would a shy child. Her brows were wrinkled with a maternal comfort, her voice quiet, like a warm blanket on cold nights.

He wasn't going to say that he wasn't afraid, but trusted her. He had never known a mother like Death.

"It's time to go, Heero."

He stared at her, frowning, and then glanced back to the body half-underneath him, still dead and not breathing and going cold. He shivered, stood up, brushed his bare knees before he realized that he was wearing a tank top and spandex. He was fifteen again, and his hands weren't calloused, and when he blinked, he didn't see any of the dead in nightmare poses. He shivered, realizing that he didn't have to because he couldn't feel the cold anymore. He shivered, and then he stopped that, too.

Heero stood and he stared at her and she crooked her finger and smiled again in a way that made him sad because he still couldn't remember his mother, if he'd ever had one, and what she might have been like if he did.

There was knock at the door.

He made to answer it, but Death took his hand and gently pulled him back. He frowned deeper, stared again at the body, at Death, at the wall where the door was knocking in the living room.

Knock knock.

_Who's there?_

Relena.

_Relena who?_

Relena opening the door and wandering into the house to find Heero dead on the floor, and screaming, screaming, screaming until her throat ran hoarse as she made great keening noises and frantically dialed the phone in jerky movements even though it was far too late, and why was she so sad?

Heero reached again to touch her. He didn't like for her to be sad...

Death shook her head, pulled him away without a word.

"But she's crying," he said. "She shouldn't cry."

"It's part of death."

Relena, vicious streaks of red running down her face, awkward hiccuping sobs clenching the remains of her voice. Screaming. Screaming for anyone, even though she knew that he was dead and there was no point.

He didn't want to turn away.

"She shouldn't cry," he said again. "I wouldn't want to make her cry."

Death took his chin and searched his eyes. She was smiling, and she was kind, and she was everything he'd ever wanted. All these years, craving for a death to give him peace, and it was here, and she was everything he'd always known she would be. Everything, but for Relena sobbing over his corpse as she began to punch his unmoving chest, beating him because it had finally been his time to die.

Quietly. But quick. The best kind of assassin.

Heero thought about those he would be leaving behind.

"She'll be better?"

"In time," Death said.

"And the others?"

"They'll understand."

And then he glared, like a stubborn child determined to get the last word in an argument. "What about Duo?"

She shrugged, but there was a flash of annoyance running across the lines of her colorless face. Heero folded his arms, refusing to move. He shook his head. "Duo is going to be very angry with me," he said.

"He'll get over it."

"I can't leave them like this."

"You have no choice."

With that, the argument was over. She was right, of course. Heero dropped his arms, took her hand, ducked his head uncertainly, afraid. He appeared to be very young, then, even younger than fifteen, younger than he'd ever been before in his entire life. "Will I see them again?"

"In time, Heero. C'mon." She tugged his arm, and he followed her into the light.

Before it took him, he asked her, "They won't be sad?"

Death. Smiling brilliantly.

"In time."

He smiled back. The lines in his eyes faded away, the light swallowed him whole, and Death let go of his hand.

The pain was gone.

--_Fini_


End file.
